


no other temptation (can be sweeter)

by Lirazel



Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is a fanservice-approved way to shatter the buildup of tension between them, and Woohyun needs it.  If they’re going to make it through this round of promotions without Woohyun having some sort of nervous breakdown, then they have to find a way to escape the heat.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	no other temptation (can be sweeter)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the several people who have asked for “Last Romeo” Wooyeol—y’all are right, the boyfriendiness is _out of control_ this comeback. May it ever be so.
> 
> [Title from "Last Romeo" obviously.]

“Do you two have to do the nipple grabbing thing during the performance?” Sunggyu demands when they’re back in the dressing room. “I get fanservice, in joke about Sungyeol’s nip-slip picture, whatever. But this isn’t ‘Man in Love.’ It doesn’t really match the concept.”

Woohyun doesn’t look at Sungyeol, hopes no one notices the strain in his voice. If they do, they’ll probably write it off as comeback exhaustion. He hopes. “The fans are eating it up, hyung. You should see the gifsets.”

“Are you trying to become the new fanservice couple?” That’s Sungjong, of course, looking flawless even soaked with sweat and with eyes that see too much. “All the grabbing each other and sitting in each others’ laps at the Pepsi filming? It’s been a little much, hyung.”

Woohyun tries to hold back the edge of defensiveness in his reply, tries to play it light. He’s too worn out—emotionally, this time, instead of just the usual physical way—to judge how well he succeeds. “Yeah, and have you seen how much the fans love it? We’re getting new Wooyeol converts all the time!”

“Yeah, and more angry Woogyu and Sooyeol fans, too,” Howon points out, sticking his earbuds in his ears, done with the discussion now that he’s made his sole contribution.

“There are always going to be fans angry about something.” Dongwoo is ever the peacemaker. “At least they probably won’t be hateful to Sungyeol like they were to Kibum. Hopefully.”

Woohyun’s memories of ToHeart promotions are a mixture of fun heightened by relief—it had been so _relaxing_ to be with Kibum constantly, though he knows _relaxing_ probably isn’t a word most anyone else would use to describe Kibum—and tamped-down bitterness at the way some of the fans attacked Kibum and Shinee. And over it all a haze of ache: of yearning, of missing of a kind he hasn’t let himself dwell on, no matter how much Kibum pushed him about it. 

“They’re hateful to me anyway, I’m used to it.” Sungyeol’s voice cracks when he speaks, and Woohyun tries not to flinch. “The fans say our mixture of sexy and silly is Infinite’s charm.”

“Fine, whatever.” Sunggyu shrugs out of his performance shirt and back into his t-shirt, and Woohyun sees him glance at himself in the mirror, wince at his reflection. Sunggyu’s been talking about trying to get abs these days, and Woohyun wishes he wouldn’t bother, but he somehow can’t come right out and say, _The good body can be a curse as much as a gift. Once you have it once, they expect it always._ It probably won’t end up mattering anyway; Woohyun’s pretty sure Sunggyu loves sleep too much to actually put in the work. “Just not every performance, okay? Try to keep a couple that are professional, just so they’ll remember we can do it. VIXX is about to come back and there’s some overlap in our moods this time.”

“You think they can do intense better than we can, hyung?” Sungjong asks mildly, sinking down beside Howon on the couch. 

“Nobody can do intense better than us,” Sunggyu insists. “But they’re all really tall.”

Hyoan-hyung sticks his head in the door just then and calls for them to head to the vans, and Woohyun is the first out the door. He sits between Myungsoo and the window on the way home, staring at the back of Sungjong’s head, caught up in an argument between his responsible, Infinite-focused side and the hungry, dark part of him that’s as scared as it is desperate.

_The nipple-pinching is good. Sungyeol let the fans in on the joke so now they’re watching for it and they think it’s just for them. Okay, so it doesn’t match the concept. It’s just a few times, just another week or two until we get so exhausted by schedules that we don’t need it anymore. Being worn out will take the edge off._

Except Woohyun knows better. Three in the morning in the practice room, rubber-limbed and gritty-eyed after eight straight hours of dance practice, and the edge had still been there. Every time Woohyun had grabbed Sungyeol by the shirt and pulled him in, it had been there, undeniable in the sheen of sweat on Sungyeol’s bared collarbones, in the half-second when his face was close enough to Woohyun’s to fan his breath across Woohyun’s lips, in the way his heavy-lidded eyes dropped down to Woohyun’s mouth. No matter if they were otherwise falling asleep on their feet, in that moment—and the moment where they slid back to back, shoulder blades sometimes brushing each other if they were sloppy in their moves and maybe Woohyun was sometimes sloppy on purpose, just to feel the solidity of Sungyeol’s back against his, even if it meant droning nagging from Sunggyu—everything was heat and desire encased in a shell of control so thin that the softest brush of air (the softest fan of Sungyeol’s breath on Woohyun’s skin) could have cracked it. 

So of course it’s there when they’re on stage, Sungyeol wearing leather and Woohyun’s button-up gaping open, faces perfectly made-up to obscure any imperfections, the adrenaline-rush of fangirl-screams-fueled performance crashing around in their veins. They’re always aware of those fangirls screaming, of the cameras circling, of the heavy heat of the lights that flatter their cheekbones and eyelashes. Woohyun isn’t really worried that that shell of control will crack, not onstage—if there’s one thing in Woohyun’s life that’s equal in power to what it is Sungyeol makes him feel, it’s his absolute dedication to being the best idol he can be. His nightmare scenarios are more mundane than the fantasy of pulling Sungyeol just a little bit further and finally catching that tempting mouth with his own; neither one of them would ever allow that to happen, but they have less control over the less dramatic consequences of the torture that is that choreo: Woohyun’s pants tightening to the point where it affects his dancing, his hand forgetting for a beat too long that it has to let go of Sungyeol’s shirt, his fevered mind distracting him and tripping him up in the steps. That could happen, far too easily Woohyun knows. 

He knows Sungyeol knows it, too, though they haven’t spoken about it. Myungsoo had showed around the nipple picture—and of course Myungsoo monitors Sungyeol’s fansites, of course he does—laughing his ass off and making the others laugh as well. Sungyeol had laughed, too, of course, because that’s what Sungyeol does, but his eyes had been sharp in that way that Woohyun knows means his brain is moving lightning-fast, and at the next interview, when the MC had—conveniently—asked the question of who any of them would like to grab, Sungyeol had jumped right on it. That should be all the proof anyone needs that Sungyeol is smart, the way he crafted the perfect release valve for them, how he laid the foundation so easily with a few laughing words so that they next time they performed they could diffuse the tension by turning it into a joke.

Admittedly, pinching Sungyeol’s nipples (and worse, having Sungyeol pinch his) is a little more intimate an interaction than Woohyun really wants to chance right now, but he reminds himself that he used to do that with his brother, with his school friends—and okay, sometimes he still does it to Sungjong when he particularly wants to bother him. It doesn’t mean anything when it’s anyone else, just a roughhousing way to irritate someone in that boyish way friends do. So what if he’d rather be touching Sungyeol like that under completely different circumstances? This is a fanservice-approved way to shatter the buildup of tension between them, and Woohyun needs it. If they’re going to make it through this round of promotions without Woohyun having some sort of nervous breakdown—honestly, sometimes he thinks Dongmin-hyung _knows_ and does these things on purpose to mess with Woohyun’s head, even if he knows that’s ridiculous—then they have to find a way to escape the heat.

Well, not escape, not fully. Woohyun can’t quite manage that, not when his dreams since the first run-through of the new choreo have been full of shirt-pulling that decidedly does not end with shirt-pulling. Not when Sungyeol’s legs look as long in the white pants as they do in the black leather as they do in those weird-ass patterned ones that should be anything but attractive. Not when the little bit of weight Sungyeol’s put on lately—that Woohyun definitely does not mention under any circumstances—leaves his mouth looking even more pouty and full than before. And especially—especially—not when Sungyeol’s breath hitches and his eyes linger as much as Woohyun’s do.

That had caught Woohyun by surprise at the first, freezing him with shock to the point where he’d tripped over his own feet and earned a sarcastic remark from Dongmin-hyung, and he’d been sure his fevered brain was hallucinating, manufacturing out of the depths of his own frustration the kind of responses he wanted Sungyeol to have. But it’s happened every time, Sungyeol’s breath speeding up and his pupils expanding even in the harsh light of the stage, and Woohyun knows there’s no way that there’s time for him to feel Sungyeol’s heartbeat when he grabs Sungyeol’s shirt, but somehow he feels it drumming all the same. Sungyeol is feeling it too, the thing Woohyun has been trying to ignore for years now, and the thought, which should leave him ecstatic and grateful instead makes him feel worse. When he thought it was one-sided, it had been easy to keep it all inside, packed in tight into the hollow of his chest, only letting out wisps of it in brushes of fingers and a few over-the-top words that could be written off as Woohyun’s typical greasiness. Woohyun didn’t _want_ anything Sungyeol didn’t want, not really, and so he’d simply not allowed himself to want it at all. But now that he thinks Sungyeol might want him, too, everything has become so much more complicated, so much more agonizing, and Woohyun doesn’t know how long he can carry on like this.

 _You’ve thought that so many times before_ , he reminds himself. _Thought you couldn’t go one more day with only a few hours of sleep, thought you couldn’t keep your smile in place for one more fan, thought you couldn’t do one more runthrough of the choreo without collapsing—and okay, you’ve collapsed a couple of times, but you were always out of the hospital and back in the practice room within a few hours. You always keep going, no matter what. You just have to do the same now._

But somehow it isn’t the same at all. 

 

 

When Sungyeol appears in the door of the gym, bare arms dangling down from his tank, face clear of makeup and eyes solemn as they look across the jungle gym of exercise equipment at Woohyun, Woohyun’s heart lurches up into his mouth and almost chokes him, and he really does consider fleeing. It isn’t like Woohyun to run—hide, yes, but not run—and yet right now it seems like the only option. Sungyeol knew Woohyun was coming here alone, Woohyun is sure, he knows Sungyeol had heard Howon tell him he was going out with some friends tonight, and Sungyeol prefers to work out in the morning, which means that Sungyeol is here on purpose when Woohyun is alone and yeah, running seems like the best course of action. He’d been hoping this moment would never come. But his hands flex around the handles of the stationary bike, and he forces himself to stay where he is, waiting. Sungyeol’s voice sounds too loud in the distance between them when it finally comes.

“It’s really stupid trying to avoid someone who lives in the same apartment as you.” Sungyeol’s voice is as steady as his eyes as he starts slowly walking towards Woohyun. Woohyun considers a teasing denial, but Sungyeol wouldn’t be fooled, and besides, it’s true. He’s been avoiding Sungyeol since the day of the Pepsi filming—well, avoiding him as much as it’s possible to avoid someone whose space you have to get up into whenever you perform. Sungyeol has to be _right there_ whenever they’re on stage, confronting Woohyun with the force of his own desire, has to be bumping arms with him during interviews or sitting in the next chair over at the salon. But Woohyun has tried to escape from Sungyeol’s presence as often as he can since the filming, because that day had just been too much. 

Sungyeol had so playful that day, bouncing up and pulling Woohyun into romping with him, challenging him to stone skipping contests even when they both knew Sungyeol was hopeless at it and would end up with a variety of red marks on his forehead and forearm from Woohyun’s flicks. It was just fanservice, Woohyun reminded himself as Sungyeol grabbed his hand yet again for no reason, and it was easy to believe it when the press of fans were within touching distance and their giggles and shrieks were filling his ears. Of course, it was less easy to believe whenever Sungyeol’s gaze caught his and there were Sungyeol’s brightbrightbright eyes staring into his. He tried and rejected a half a dozen labels for the emotion he saw in there—expectant, challenging, teasing—but none of them seemed like _enough_ to encompass whatever it was Sungyeol’s eyes were trying to tell him. Woohyun had thrown himself into performing for the fans in an attempt to ignore that persistent gaze, but Sungyeol had made it hard, always touching him (and okay, Woohyun’s man enough to admit he couldn’t always stop himself from touching back), and then later, while he was resting, Sungyeol had dropped down into his _lap_ and made himself at home, and he knows Sungyeol had to feel the pounding of his heart against his back, the tension in his body and the shallowness of his breathing. Dongwoo sits in his lap all the damn time, and sometimes he even lets Myungsoo do it (he shakes his head at the way that big heavy guy thinks he’s a little kid who can fit in anyone’s lap), but this was _Sungyeol_ , the pale of Sungyeol’s neck right in front of his eyes, just calling for his tongue to taste it; the scent of Sungyeol’s hair beckoning to his fingers to slide into its silkiness; the solidity and length of Sungyeol’s body mocking him with its closeness. He wasn’t sure until a manager called them and Sungyeol moved away that the squirming had been intentional—after all, Sungyeol has always had a lot of excess energy—but the look Sungyeol had given him before he’d walked off had erased all doubts. 

Well, doubts about whether the problem was mutual. The other doubts Woohyun still has in spades.

“The considerate thing to do when someone is avoiding you is to let them,” he says finally, hoping his voice sounds flat and not pleading. “They usually have a reason for it.”

Sungyeol cocks a brow—at least as much of one as he can manage; he’s not exactly blessed in that area. “I’m sure they think they do. But usually it’s not a very good one.”

Woohyun’s feeling a little dizzy at the way Sungyeol is practically stalking towards him, and he’s worried he’ll tumble right off the seat of the stationary bike, so he climbs down, trying not to fall on his face in the process. “It’s usually an _excellent_ one,” he says, and when he’s finally on his feet on the ground, Sungyeol is right there _right there_ as close as he is during “Last Romeo,” and Woohyun really should have run while he could.

“Sungyeol—”

“I think it’s a really pathetic reason myself, especially when it’s making things awkward and potentially causing trouble for Infinite.”

Woohyun wants to laugh, because _trouble for Infinite_ is the very reason he’s killing himself over this, surely Sungyeol knows that? And Woohyun thinks maybe he does: Sungyeol’s eyes are blazing in a way that makes Woohyun hot all over, but there’s a hint of hesitation, of doubt lingering in their depths and—no, _no_ , Sungyeol is _not allowed_ to step closer, to make Woohyun have to crane his neck to look up at him, to square his jaw defiantly. Woohyun’s eyes dart to the door. It’s late enough that probably no one will come, but anyone _could_ and—

“I locked it.” 

Sungyeol says it like a challenge, a dare, or maybe like a question, and Woohyun doesn’t know how he manages both, but Sungyeol’s staring down at him and his breath is fanning across Woohyun’s nose and— “You know we can’t.”

Woohyun doesn’t have to look down at them to know Sungyeol’s hands have fisted up; he can tell by the sudden tension in Sungyeol’s shoulders. “I know it’s not asking permission. I know it’s not going away. And I know—” He stumbles over the word, and Woohyun thinks of the vulnerability lurking in his eyes, of the delicate strength of his wrists, of all the insecurities he knows Sungyeol keeps locked away inside, and he thinks he finally understands why all their song lyrics are about a desperate drive to protect. “—I know that it’s better to get it out of our systems here so it doesn’t bite us in the ass onstage.”

“Yeol—”

But Woohyun doesn’t get to protest, because here’s the shirt-pulling from his dreams, only it’s _worse_ ( ~~better~~ ) because it’s Sungyeol grabbing _him_ by the shirt and yanking _him_ forward and, _fuck_ , that’s got to be the hottest thing in the world and—

And next moment he’s moaning into Sungyeol’s mouth—as lush as he’d always dreamed—and his fingers are sliding up into Sungyeol’s hair and everything about it is just like what’s been haunting his sleep except _more_ and—

He wrenches himself away but doesn’t—can’t—let go of Sungyeol’s hair. “We can’t, Yeol, you know we can’t, Infinite—”

“Infinite isn’t in here.” Sungyeol’s lips are pinker than ever and his eyes are darker and brighter than ever, but the hardened determination of before is gone out of his voice, melted down to something like pleading—to something that sounds the way the ache in Woohyun’s chest feels. “No one’s here. Just us. And we both—we both—you do, don’t you?”

Sungyeol’s voice cracks on that last, and Woohyun can’t stop himself from jerking Sungyeol back down and swallowing his gasp with a kiss, and then Sungyeol’s hands slide from gripping his biceps down to his hips and the coolness of the wall against Woohyun’s back is a shock, but he lets Sungyeol press him further into it. 

The contrast between the heat surging through his body and the cold of the wall through his t-shirt just heightens everything, just makes the way Sungyeol’s mouth tastes as he licks into it even better, just makes Sungyeol’s closeness more intoxicating. 

“But what if someone finds out—” he breathes against Sungyeol’s lips when they come up for air. “The scandal—what if—” He breaks off with a whimper as Sungyeol bites down on his bottom lip.

“No one’s going to find out. We’ll be careful, so careful.” Sungyeol’s mouth burns its way across Woohyun’s cheekbone, his fingers biting into the give next to his hipbones. Which just makes Woohyun jerk his hips against Sungyeol’s when Sungyeol whispers, “I can be careful, Woohyun, can you be careful?”

 _Careful_ is not the first word anyone would use to describe Sungyeol, and it’s Woohyun who has a reputation for being conscientious about the way they come across to outsiders, so it’s a ridiculous thing for Sungyeol to ask—especially when Woohyun’s the one trying to be the voice of reason here—but Woohyun finds himself nodding frantically as Sungyeol nips at his earlobe and slides his mouth down his neck. 

“This is smart, Woohyun-ah,” Sungyeol says against his neck, language dropped, and maybe that was the reason Woohyun’s been so reluctant to let him use banmal, because hearing it is hot it in a way that makes Woohyun’s knees quiver, in a way maybe he’s known all along would batter his control. “Get it out of our systems now so we don’t do something stupid when we perform.”

Woohyun lets out a laugh that’s half moan. “Isn’t that why you were—with the nipple-pinching? So we wouldn’t do something stupid when we perform?”

Sungyeol hums in agreement, mouth wet against Woohyun’s cheekbones, and Woohyun rakes his fingernails down Sungyeol’s back, glad—so glad—that the t-shirt is in the way, even though he suspects in a few moments it won’t be. 

“Why do you think I was avoiding you?” Woohyun wonders when his eyes screwed up shut, but it doesn’t matter. “I thought it would be easier if—”

“Fuck easier,” Sungyeol rasps, punctuating it with a swipe of his tongue across Woohyun’s collarbone. “Who needs easier when you have better?”

 

 

Sungyeol whines and protests, but he lets Woohyun wrap himself around him after with minimal squirming. This is disgusting, really, to be laying on the floor of the gym—which has to be unbelievably unsanitary—both of them sticky with sweat and spunk, but here’s all of Sungyeol’s warm skin against his for the first time, and yes, they should really get up and get dressed and sneak back into the dorm and clean themselves up as quickly as possible, but Woohyun has wanted this for too long to move just yet. He presses a kiss to the side of Sungyeol’s neck, hooks his chin over Sungyeol’s shoulder. 

“I don’t think it worked,” he says, voice rough as he rises and falls with the rhythm of Sungyeol’s breathing.

“What the fuck, Woohyun, are you—it worked really, really well.”

Woohyun puffs out a laugh against Sungyeol’s neck. “I meant I don’t think it really got it out of our systems. Or mine, anyway. I think I’ll just want you more now.”

He has his eyes closed, so he doesn’t see the pink tinting Sungyeol’s skin, but he knows it’s there anyway. “So I’m really that good, yeah?”

Sungyeol’s hand, his tongue, had been inexpert, but it hadn’t mattered. At all. “It’s you,” Woohyun says, nuzzling his nose against Sungyeol’s neck, and he doesn’t know if the shiver that snakes its way through Sungyeol’s body is from the gesture or the words. 

Sungyeol’s voice is so careful while trying to sound casual that he doesn’t even sound like himself, but the words, “It’s you, too,” are enough. The last of the tension that’s been building in Woohyun since they started working on this choreo—no, for much longer, since he first started noticing Sungyeol in a way that was _noticing_ —eases out of him.

“But don’t pinch my nipples again when we’re onstage. I think that fanservice needs to end after this.”

Woohyun laughs, loud and full. “Sunggyu-hyung will be so happy.”

 

 

Next performance, when Woohyun does the shirt-pull move, Sungyeol’s eyes and the smirk on his lips are wicked, but there’s a promise there, too, steady and pure. Woohyun lets out a deep breath, exhaling the fire inside him, reminding himself he can bask in it later, and carries on.


End file.
